Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

One purpose of an inaugural is to convince the age it is the most important in history. In that it merely underlines two of Shaw's Maxims for Revolutionists, the Faute de Mieux:

In my childhood I demurred to the description of a certain young lady as “the pretty Miss So and So.” My aunt rebuked me by saying “Remember always that the least plain sister is the family beauty.”

No age or condition is without its heroes. The least incapable general in a nation is its Cæsar, the least imbecile statesman its Solon, the least confused thinker its Socrates, the least commonplace poet its Shakespear.

We learn that "Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Bono and Shakira" will be there, which is supposed to get the stupid excited, but merely confirms both maxims; after all, JFK had Ol' Blue (although we must remember Blue got Jack into bed with his Mafia friends, literally and figuratively); and for the election in 1944 FDR had Arts and Sciences for Roosevelt, whose membership (the convicted historian Conrad Black tells us) took up a whole page of letterhead and included

Jo Davidson, Larry Adler, Fredric March, Tallulah Bankhead, Ethel Barrymore, William Rose Benét, Thomas Hart Benton, Leonard Bernstein, Henry Seidel Canby, Eddie Cantor, Aaron Copland, Bennett Cerf, George Cukor, Agnes DeMille, John Dewey, W. E. B. DuBois, Will Durant, Albert Einstein, Clifton Fadiman, Edna Ferber, Jose Ferrer, Ruth Gordon, Oscar Hammerstein [II], Moss Hart, Lillian Hellman, George Jessel, George Kaufman, Hellen [SIC] Keller, Gene Kelly, Otto Klemperer, Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Mann, Karl Menninger, Yehudi Menuhin, Clifford Odets, Dorothy Parker, Wilfred [SIC] Pelletier, Jerome Robbins, Paul Robeson, Richard Rodgers, Carl Sandburg, Joseph M. Schenk [SIC], James Thurber, Michael Todd, Louis Untermeyer, Mark Van Doren, Max Weber, Orson Welles, Franz Werfel and Monty Woolley. [!]

We haven't mentioned those who campaigned for him on the radio from Hollywood just before the election (omitting several names above):

Joan Bennett, Mr. and Mrs. Irving Berlin, Humphrey Bogart, Virginia Bruce, Jimmy Cagney, Harry Carey, Claudette Colbert, Joseph Caution [we think he means Cotten], Linda Darnell, John Garfield, Judy Garland, James Gleason, Paulette Goddard, Susan Hayward, Rita Hayworth, Walter Huston, Rex Ingram, Danny Kaye, Evelyn Keyes, Groucho Marx, Paul Muni, George Raft, Edward G. Robinson, Gale Sondergaard, Lana Turner, Richard Whorf, Jane Wyman, Keenan Wynn....

And from New York:

Constance Bennett, Gertrude Berg, Milton Berle, Charles Boyer, Marc Connelly, Eddie Dowling, Olin Downes, John Gunther, Fannie Hurst, the Ink Spots, Dorothy Maynor, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Alonzo Myers [Henry Alonzo Myers, an English professor at Cornell], Waldo Pierce, Elmer Rice, Barney Ross, Vincent Sheean, Frank Sinatra [yep, then too], Paul Strand, Franchot Tone, Benay Venuta and Fay Wray. [!!!!!]

I vote for the past.